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A Lurker's History of Paradox and the Paradox Community *
by Stacy Rowley


The Mid-1990s Windows Days: the Software

September 1993 found PW 4.5 (fixing a good number of PW 1.0 problems and providing customizable style sheets) released along with SQL Link. (Note that PDOS 4.5 was released at the same time; actually the jump in PW version number was made just to synchronize the numbers!)

SQL Link provided the software necessary to attach to a SQL server. Now, in the Client/Server environment, a Paradox application could provide the front end to a backend database server such as Borland's Interbase, Oracle, or Microsoft SQL Server. (But under C/S, the Paradox application must be tailored to handle a different role, one in which it transmits or receives just the data needed for that operation.)

PW 5.0 was released a year later. It had 139 new or modified methods, including ones for printer control, clipboard control, directory control, form synchronization, and resource information. It also came with a rich set of enhancements to the form designer and a completely revamped ObjectPAL debugger. Maintenance release PW 5.01 came out in February 1995. At this point we had a very usable, quite stable Paradox to use.

Back around 1993, office suites had become market entities for Microsoft and Lotus. A series of events then took place that started Paradox down a path:
  • In May 1993, WordPerfect and Borland announce a virtual office suite called Borland Office, consisting of a bundle of WordPerfect for Windows, Quattro Pro for Windows and Paradox for Windows, with a $595 listed price. It was priced favorably with Microsoft and Lotus offerings at $795 and $750, although each had a different set of products in the mix.


  • In March 1994, Novell simultaneously purchased WordPerfect Corporation, merging it into Novell as a wholly owned subsidiary, and Quattro Pro. Immediately following, Robert Frankenberg was hired as CEO to succeed Ray Noorda. The office product was renamed PerfectOffice and added GroupWise as messaging and email capabilities to compete with Microsoft and Lotus suites.


  • Borland evolved its Turbo Pascal language into Delphi and released it to the market in 1995. With this introduction, many advanced PW developers began migrating to Delphi because it provided the rapid application development (RAD) environment that PW had pioneered while it allowed developers to be free from some of the restrictions of PW (especially with respect to Windows API). PW developers who stayed with Paradox tended to work with smaller companies, whose needs typically do not require lower level (more detailed, or closer to the machine) programming. A resulting effect of all this was the demise of many SIGs because the advanced developers tended to be their leaders.


Next:
The Mid-1990s Windows Days: the People (the Community)


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